Nwentoma: The Sacred Art of Kente Cloth, from Bonwire Looms to Global Icon

Long before the vibrant kente strips that would come to symbolise Ghanaian identity, the peoples of the Gold Coast interior were already weaving. Archaeological excavations at Begho — the great Akan trading town near modern Hwidiem in the Brong-Ahafo Region — have uncovered spindle whorls and dye pits dated to the 14th through 18th centuries, providing the earliest physical evidence of loom weaving in southern Ghana. At nearby Bono Manso, capital of the Bono Kingdom founded around 1295 CE, similar finds confirm that textile production was integral to the trans-Saharan trade economy that connected the forest zone to Jenne-Jeno and Timbuktu. Merrick Posnansky, who led the Begho excavations from 1970 to 1979 for the University of Ghana, identified cotton thread fragments alongside brass-working debris, suggesting that weaving workshops operated within the same artisan quarters as metalworkers and potters.

Further west at Wenchi, spindle whorls have been dated to the 16th and 17th centuries, establishing a geographic corridor of textile production stretching from the Bono heartland toward what would become Asante territory. The earliest looms were likely simple frame looms producing narrow strips of undyed cotton — white cloth that served as both everyday garment and burial shroud. The Akan word "ntama" (cloth) appears in some of the oldest recorded Twi vocabulary, catalogued by Johann Gottlieb Christaller in his 1881 Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language, suggesting deep cultural embedding.

The trans-Saharan connection was critical. North African and Sahelian textiles — particularly Fulani blankets and Mande strip-woven cloth from the Kong and Bondoukou regions of modern Côte d'Ivoire — provided both competition and inspiration. Timothy Garrard, whose research on Akan trade is foundational, documented how Dyula Muslim traders brought not only gold-weighing technology but also weaving techniques southward through the trade towns of Begho, Bono Manso, and Nsoko. The narrow-strip loom itself is a West African innovation, fundamentally different from the broad-loom traditions of North Africa, and its distribution from the Senegambia to the Akan forests traces centuries of cultural diffusion along trade routes.